SAWAN RAM Vs. GOBINDA RAM AND ANOTHER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Whether the jurisdiction of the Civil Courts is impliedly barred from the field covered specifically and squarely by the provisions of the Haryana Urban (Control of Rent and Eviction) Act, 1973 is the significant and the pristinely legal question which is before this Full Bench on a reference.

(2.) The relevant facts would pale into relative insignificance in view of the primarily legal nature of the issue aforesaid. Nevertheless, the matrix of facts giving rise to the controversy had inevitably to be noticed in the first instance. Gobind Ram Respondent landlord had on May 31, 1975 preferred a suit for possession of a shop claiming that the construction thereof had been completed in the month of August, 1969. During the pendency of the suit, the Haryana Urban (Control of Rent and Eviction) Act, 1973 (hereinafter called the Act) was amended with the result that all the non -residential buildings constructed after March, 1962 would also come within the ambit of the Act. As a necessary consequence the ground on which the ejectment of the tenant was sought from the shop in dispute disappeared and the Petitioner -tenant preferred an application that the suit may be dismissed atleast qua the relief of ejectment. The trial court however, rejected the application holding apparently that despite the virtual barring of the relief of ejectment by a decree of the Civil Court, the suit was nevertheless maintainable. The Petitioner tenant has come up by way of this Revision Petition.

(3.) The matter came up before my learned brother S.P. Goyal, J. Noticing the thin and perhaps an unsustainable line of distinction between Sec. 13 (1)of the Act and the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 which had been drawn in Suresh Kumar v/s. Bhim Sen : (1978) 80 P.L.R. 751 and further two Division Bench judgments of the Court holding that Sec. 13 (1)of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 did not affect the jurisdiction of the Civil Court to pass the decree for ejectment, he referred the matter to a Larger Bench to examine the correctness of the view expressed.